Seattle leaders decry lack of action on gun control

A succession of mass shootings, including those in this state, cry out for such measures as closing the “gun show loophole” and securing guns from children, but Washington won’t see this happen until and unless citizens take on the gun lobby, the Democratic leader in the Washington State Senate said Friday.

“The problem goes on, the challenge is us,” said state Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle. “There are not enough Democrats in the Legislature, let alone Republicans, to find a way through to a common sense approach on control of firearms.”

Murray

The killing of 20 schoolchildren, aged 5 to 10, caused several political leaders in Seattle to raise recent killings here, from shootings in a cafe on Roosevelt Way last year to the 2006 Capitol Hill massacre in which six young people were murdered. “We know what it’s like in this city to have senseless shootings,” Mayor Mike McGinn told a news conference.

“The root causes of violence, and easy access that allows the violent to have tools, has maximized the carnage,” Murray added in an interview.

Both Murray and McGinn, likely rivals in the 2013 Seattle mayor’s race, raised not only the need for action to close the gun show loophole, but noted that the Legislature has sharply cut mental health services in recent years. The lawmakers opted not to take the unpopular path of raising taxes or putting a tax measure before voters.

“Elected officials who refuse even to discuss this (violence) should be voted out of office,” Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said late on Friday. “People need to rise up and insist that this insanity stop. What is needed is a rational discussion of the awesome firepower that these people are able to deploy . . . It’s just nuts.”

Holmes

But discussion is blocked. Gun control has been a pariah cause in America since the 1994 election, which came soon after Congress enacted a limited assault weapons ban. President Bill Clinton estimated that Democrats lost 30 U.S. House seats because of the issue.

The National Rifle Association drew a bead on such lawmakers as House Speaker Tom Foley and U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, both Democrats from Eastern Washington. NRA President Charlton Heston flew to Seattle — he wouldn’t go to Spokane — to raise money against Foley. Foley and Inslee both lost. Inslee won a Western Washington congressional seat in 1998, and was elected governor this year.

“The gun lobby is shockingly strong,” Murray said. “We are facing one of the biggest organized lobbyist groups in America and it is so in state after state.”

Murray acknowledged there is “no simple answer,” writing on his Facebook page late Friday: “What has happened to the fabric of society in America that people engage in mass killings? What happened in America that so many people feel so isolated, hopeless, and angry that they engage in mass shootings and other acts of terrible violence?”

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn

McGinn, for his part, said: “It’s the duty of the people and the city of elected officials to keep the pressure up.”

Attention quickly goes away, however, after brief media frenzies around the killing grounds. The nation’s TV networks paid scant attention earlier this year when Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced in Tucson for the murders of nine people in a rampage that severely wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords and her husband, NASA shuttle astronaut Mark Kelly, were in the courtroom.

Gun violence is treated “not as a problem to solve,” Kelly said in a statement at sentencing, but is “the whole elephant in the room” to be ignored. “As a nation we have repeatedly passed up the opportunity to address the issue: after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Tucson and after Aurora, we have done nothing.”

After the Newton, Conn., shootings on Friday, Mark Kelly wrote on his Facebook page:

“This time our response must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence. The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all victims of violence deserve leaders who have the courage to participate in a meaningful discussion about gun laws and how they can be reformed and better enforced to prevent gun violence in America.